Hataraku Maou-sama! episode 9: War on Fast Food

Nothing really happened this episode, yet so many awesome things happened at the same time. Obviously the story didn’t get quite far this time around, we didn’t even spent a whole day with this episode, but at least in term of Maou’s progression has a shift manager, things are going more smoothly now. There was actually progression on that end, we were able to see how Maou still had his experience has leader of the demonic armies well in mind. He managed to turn an impossible situation into his favor. I mean it wasn’t his fault to begin with if he had so little customer. To begin with the Sentucky had the advantage of being completely new on a busy day, therefore everyone were more inclined to try it, even though for some reason people didn’t seemed to mind the super long line and waiting longer to eat. Secondly, it seems like MgRonald’s food is just terrible compared to Sentucky, there is really nothing a shift manager can do to make the food they serve any better, I would doubt that even a national or regional manager wouldn’t have the power to change a recipe, so even less a shift manager.

I was still very happy to see that Maou actually managed to win nonetheless, even though magic seemed to be involved in the process somehow. Although I have so serious doubt that this magic actually emanated from Maou in the first place, I have a feeling that the manager of Sentucky is the assailant of Emilia and that he is responsible for the sudden magical outburst that we saw at the end. Who is that manager exactly I have no idea, but I suppose we will find out soon enough, after all we are quite in need of a new character to appear to challenge Maou. The show really is much slower than I would have hoped it to be, by now I wish that Maou would have already gained twice this much power and that the number of character would stop increasing every second episode. I don’t like anime that adds new characters constantly even though those character come out of nowhere and have little to no purpose in the story. Just look at Lucifer who was introduces a few episode back and who still haven’t done shit to help Maou or counter him in any way. Lucifer could have never existed or he could have died after the confrontation and nothing would have changed in the story.

I think by far my favorite part of the episode was when Ashiya gloriously explained the story between himself Maou and Emilia. It was such a great and epic explanation of their past I nearly wish it was true. I guess their real past is even better than that story, but we were never really told in detail either the true implication of the war between the demons and the humans. For instance we never managed to see how Ashiya used to lead the demonic armies, he was a general, but the only thing we know of him is that he do the laundry well and he knows how to manage the finance of the household. It would make things way more interesting if we could see Ashiya in full power and leading once again too.

I seriously hope that the show won’t end absolutely open ended with 3 more characters in the next 3 episodes. I want a real ending and real progress for this show, it could be a much better show, but it’s not that bad either, it would help it redeem itself if it could end on a good note.